Additives in food rise with little oversight

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A plate of Quorn Chik’n Nuggets. Thousands of consumers say a protein-rich fungus in Quorn products has caused them to experience allergic reactions and severe bouts of vomiting and diarrhea. The manufacturer says allergic reactions are rare and that its vegetarian product line is safe and healthy.
(Bill O’Leary / The Washington Post) - Bulletin

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A plate of Quorn Chik’n Nuggets. Thousands of consumers say a protein-rich fungus in Quorn products has caused them to experience allergic reactions and severe bouts of vomiting and diarrhea. The manufacturer says allergic reactions are rare and that its vegetarian product line is safe and healthy.
(Bill O’Leary / The Washington Post)2786202

WASHINGTON — The explosion of new food additives coupled with an easing of oversight requirements is allowing manufacturers to avoid the scrutiny of the Food and Drug Administration, which is responsible for ensuring the safety of chemicals streaming into the food supply.

And in hundreds of cases, the FDA doesn’t even know of the existence of new additives, which can include chemical preservatives, flavorings and thickening agents, records and interviews show.

“We simply do not have the information to vouch for the safety of many of these chemicals,” said Michael Taylor, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for food.

The FDA has received thousands of consumer complaints about additives in recent years, saying certain substances seem to trigger asthmatic attacks, serious bouts of vomiting, intestinal-tract disorders and other health problems.

At a pace far faster than in previous years, companies are adding secret ingredients to everything from energy drinks to granola bars. But the more widespread concern among food-safety advocates and some federal regulators is the quickening trend of companies opting for an expedited certification process to a degree never intended when it was established 17 years ago to, in part, help businesses.

A voluntary certification system has nearly replaced one that relied on a more formal, time-consuming review — where the FDA, rather than companies, made the final determination on what is safe. The result is that consumers have little way of being certain that the food products they buy won’t harm them.

“We aren’t saying we have a public health crisis,” Taylor said. “But we do have questions about whether we can do what people expect of us.”

In the five decades since Congress gave the FDA responsibility for ensuring the safety of additives in the food supply, the number has spiked from 800 to more than 9,000, ranging from common substances such as salt to new green-tea extracts. This increase has been driven largely by demand from busy Americans, who get more than half their daily meals from processed foods, according to government and industry records.

Within the past six months, top officials at the FDA and in the food industry have acknowledged that new steps must be taken to better account for the additives proliferating in the food supply. The Center for Food Safety, an advocacy group, has responded more aggressively; it sued the FDA this year, saying the agency has abdicated its oversight of the additives approval process. The Grocery Manufacturers Association also provided seed money this spring to create a research center at Michigan State University to deal with the rising concerns over additives.

‘They created a side door’

For new, novel ingredients — or when approved additives are used in new ways — the law says companies should seek formal FDA approval, which must be based on rigorous research proving the additive is safe. The agency uses the phrase “food additive,” in a narrow legal sense, to apply to substances that get this approval.

But many other additives are common food ingredients — vinegar is considered a classic example. The law allows manufacturers to certify, based on research, that such ingredients are already Generally Recognized as Safe, or GRAS.

For both types of additives, FDA scientists initially conducted detailed reviews of the company’s research.

This oversight system shifted dramatically in 1997. In response to a shortage of staff members and complaints from industry that the process was too cumbersome and did not improve food safety, the FDA proposed new rules. The agency told companies that were going the GRAS route — which turned a years-long process into one of months — that they no longer would have to submit their research and raw data. The companies can share just a summary of their findings with the agency.

In part, FDA officials hoped that by streamlining the GRAS notification process, companies that previously avoided informing the agency of new additives would be encouraged to keep the government in the loop, current and former agency officials said.

The changes didn’t work out as planned.

For starters, most additives continued to debut without the FDA being notified.

Moreover, companies that did choose to go through the FDA oversight process largely abandoned the formal approval route, opting instead for the new, cursory GRAS process, even for additives that could be considered new and novel, according to agency documents and an analysis of those records by the Natural Resources Defense Council.

“They created a side door,” said Tom Neltner, a chemical engineer with the NRDC who has co-authored six academic articles about the FDA additives process over the past four years.

No fix in sight

An average of only two additive petitions seeking formal approval are filed annually by food and chemical companies, while the agency receives dozens of GRAS notifications, according to an NRDC analysis of FDA data. Hundreds of other food chemicals and ingredients have been introduced without notifying the FDA at all, according to agency officials, trade journals and food safety groups.

FDA officials, food safety advocates and the food industry all agree there are problems. There are too many cases in which the agency is not notified of new additives or the science remains secret. But there’s no consensus about how to fix the system.

Industry trade groups say that the additives in today’s foods do not pose a public safety risk, but most agree improvements for better tracking and oversight are needed.

“It’s the right time to take a step back,” said Leon Bruner, the Grocery Manufacturers Association’s chief science officer. “There are problems with transparency. How can we be sure that the FDA is aware of ingredients?”

The Quorn case

When the manufacturer of a vegetarian line of foods called Quorn first approached the FDA in 1986, the company asked that the agency give formal additive approval for a protein-rich fungus the company makes in large fermentation vats.

Marlow Foods dubbed its new fungal ingredient “mycoprotein.”

Fifteen years passed without the FDA moving on the petition. Internal FDA documents, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, show no sign of the agency evaluating the safety claims made in the petition. Because the FDA declined interview requests about Quorn products, it is unclear why the petition sat for so long.

After the long delay and without withdrawing the original petition, Marlow filed a GRAS notification with the FDA in 2001, saying the firm had hired a group of experts who had determined that mycoprotein was safe. Under the rules, the notification did not — nor did it have to — cite every study the company had conducted.

A study that was not mentioned was an unpublished “large scale volunteer trial” from the late 1970s. During the trial, nearly 5 percent of the 200 participants reported feeling ill after eating several “test meals,” according to the study, which was obtained by The Washington Post. Four had “more severe reactions,” including two who started to “vomit violently,” another who became “violently sick” and another who “experienced nausea and vomiting” after eating Quorn products that contain mycoprotein. The study says that the “reactions” could have been caused by a response to mycoprotein.

In a prepared statement, Quorn said the study had been shared with the FDA but was not cited in the GRAS submission because “it was a small study and at that time nearly 25 years old and more recent data was relevant and important to the submission.”

Once Marlow filed its GRAS notification, the FDA acted quickly. Within six weeks, the FDA signed off on it, using its standard language, noting it was not vouching for the safety of mycoprotein and that it was the “continuing responsibility of Marlow to ensure that food ingredients that the firm markets are safe.”

Within months, the Center for Science in the Public Interest began alerting the FDA to complaints from consumers in the United States and Britain, where the products have been sold since 1985.

Reactions described

“They said they broke out in hives and had breathing difficulties — anaphylactic reactions,” said Michael Jacobson, the group’s executive director. “The GI episodes they described were violent. They would vomit so hard it could break the blood vessels in their eyes.”

Independent researchers also published three papers in academic journals, between 2003 and 2009, describing severe and even life-threatening allergic reactions to mycoprotein.

The FDA ultimately contacted hundreds of people that the advocacy center sent their way. In 2012, the agency wrote to the group agreeing that “individuals may experience adverse reactions” to Quorn products and that a “food allergy cannot be ruled out.” However, FDA officials said they believed “most of these reactions are due to non-life threatening food intolerance.”

The FDA said it would not challenge Marlow’s GRAS findings.

The CSPI said the FDA treated the concerns as an inconvenience more than a safety concern. It said the agency, at a minimum, should have issued a public warning to people who could be allergic or intolerant, or mandate warning labels. FDA officials strongly disagreed with this characterization, documents show.

In a statement to The Post, Marlow Foods said the fungal-based ingredient in its products is a “natural protein” that is “harvested and fermented in a similar way to beer, yeast or yogurt,” adding that claims that Quorn is unsafe “have been proven inaccurate and lack scientific credibility.” However, the company acknowledges on its website that some consumers may have a “true allergic reaction” to its products.

Bypassing the FDA

Companies often bypass the FDA altogether. Under the rules, companies may make their own GRAS determination. Sharing it with the agency and getting it to sign off is voluntary.

In 2007, Japan-based Kao Corp. tried to get the FDA to sign off on its GRAS determination for its extract containing the chemical Epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG). The company planned to promote its qualities as an antioxidant and possible fat-burner in a line of diet and sports drinks, according to FDA emails obtained by the Natural Resources Defense Council through a Freedom of Information Act request.

But the FDA toxicologists first asked Kao to address the findings of more than a dozen scientific studies, including one that showed it could induce “toxicity in the liver, kidneys and intestine.” Another showed it could produce “defects in the brain and heart.” And still another said it may “contribute to infant leukemia,” the FDA emails show.

FDA told Kao Corp. to go back to the drawing board. Instead, in 2008, it withdrew its notification. Kao spokeswoman Billie Cole said the company believes its products, which are marketed in Japan, are healthy and safe.